Challenges in Sustainability | 2017 | Volume 5 | Issue 1 | Pages 43–51

DOI: 10.12924/cis2017.05010043

ISSN: 2297–6477

Challenges in

Sustainability

Research Article

You Can’t Eat Biodiversity: Agency and Irrational Norms in

European Aquatic Environmental Law

Tim O’Higgins

Marine Governace Group, MaREI, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.

E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +353 214864324

Submitted: 20 March 2016 | In revised form: 21 July 2016 | Accepted: 12 October 2016 |

Published: 19 March 2017

Abstract:

Policies of the European Union cover a range of social, environmental and economic aspirations

and the current environmental directives and laws have evolved from a suite of norms which have changed

over time. These may be characterised loosely according to ‘Three Ps’: Practical, those taking an

anthropocentric approach; Pure, those taking an ecocentric approach and Popular, those appealing to the

general public. In this paper I use these three perspectives as a tool to analyse the complexity and identify

contradictions in European aquatic environmental legislation. Some trade-offs between development and

conservation are identiﬁed and used to characterise the potential qualities of more successful agency to

achieve environmental goals in the governance of European aquatic environments.

Keywords: biodiversity; environmental policy; ecosystem services; transformation

1. Argument: Human Development and Evolving

Norms

The normative role of sustainability science, by all modern

definitions, is that of balancing conservation of the environ-

ment with sustainable use, where sustainable development

is defined as meeting current needs without compromis-

ing the needs of the future [

]. The Sustainable Devel-

opment Goals (SDGs) set out the most comprehensive

suite of 17 social, economic and environmental goals and

169 targets to which sustainability science might aspire.

Achieving these goals is a major challenge for humanity. At

current efficiencies of resource use, and with current pat-

terns of resource distribution in global society, the goals of

eliminating poverty and hunger, promoting equality, provid-

ing jobs, economic infrastructure and growth all demand an

increase in the resources available to many of the world’s

seven billion population. At the same time, considerations

of ecological footprints suggest that many wealthier na-

tions are living beyond sustainable levels of consumption

[

] and will need to decrease these levels to achieve

sustainability. Against this backdrop of global inequality,

biodiversity globally is declining as humans continue to

appropriate undeveloped areas [

]. At the core of sus-

tainability science lie trade-offs between equitability and

affluence as well as human use and non-use of natural

resources. These trade-offs are ‘wicked problems’ which

will involve winners and losers, and their solutions require

moral judgments [6].

In 1992 the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) recog-

nised the “intrinsic value” of the diversity of life [

], which ul-

timately contributed to the SDGs recognising the“integrated

and indivisible’ balance between social economic and envi-

ronmental aspects of sustainability [

].The current outlook

on the role of man and nature set out in the SDGs has

changed considerably since the inception of the European

project following World War II. At that time, human popula-

tion was approaching the peak of its growth [

] with the pop-

 2017 by the authors; licensee Librello, Switzerland. This open access article was published

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ulation movement (successor to the eugenics movement

and precursor to the modern environmental movement) ad-

vocating direct population control in a resource constrained

planet [

–

] while the “green revolution” successfully set

about improving agricultural yields [

]. However, this in-

tensiﬁcation of agricultural production has led to increasing

environmental degradation of terrestrial and aquatic habi-

tats [

–

] and these growing global pressures brought

into focus the increasing rate of species extinctions [

The prevailing narrative in modern conservation sci-

ence connects biodiversity with ecosystem processes and

human well-being through ecosystem services, the ben-

efits obtained by humans from nature. These may be di-

vided into supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural

services [

]. The benefits provided by ecosystem

services may be further categorised as active or pas-

sive use values as well as non-use values such as ex-

istence, option and bequest values [

]. This narrative

accommodates the norms of the SDGs recognising that

social systems are connected to ecological systems and

viewing biodiversity as an underpinning natural resource

enabling development. There remains, however, great un-

certainty about the mechanisms connecting biodiversity

to ecosystem processes, ecosystem services and bene-

fits [

]. Despite ongoing global declines in biodiversity

and ecosystem services, human well-being at the global

level has continued to increase, which may be due to the

reliance of well-being on food production, the decoupling

of well-being from nature through technology, or time-lags

between the loss of biodiversity and its consequences in

terms of well-being [25].

The EU Biodiversity strategy [

], successor to the Biodi-

versity Action Plan [

], aims to halt biodiversity loss within

Europe and stop global biodiversity loss by 2020 in line

with SDGs 14 and 15, the protection and sustainable use

of the oceans, and terrestrial environments respectively.

The EU strategy [

] was developed to provide Europe with

a mechanism to achieve its commitments under the CBD.

Meeting the goals of the biodiversity strategy through the

use of existing environmental legislation and the develop-

ment of new legislation in Europe requires joining together

many different environmental laws and policies, which have

developed alongside the shifting norms described above.

Norms are considered here in the general sense as sets of

societal values or standards.

The shifting role of biological science in social develop-

ment, through the eugenics, population and subsequent

environmental movements, has left a legacy of economics,

politics and legislation which have formed the current mod-

els for Earth system’s governance and have potential to

enable, or to hamper, productive development of environ-

mental governance systems. Changing norms have shaped

European environment and development policies over time,

and the application of environmental regulation has led to

social and political trade-offs, generally favouring economic

development (sustainable or otherwise).

Europe has been hailed as a leader in environmental

protection [

] and the quest for sustainability, yet despite

a wide range of legislative measures and environmental

protection policies, the European Biodiversity Strategy is

failing [

]. Traditionally environmental science has been

reactive [

], i.e. problems are usually identiﬁed and a

solution is found to address the speciﬁc problem. Yet to

achieve sustainability, it is increasingly recognised that a

more proactive, transformative approach is required where

there is a coherent vision of a sustainable future [

]. Nor-

mative analysis of existing policies can therefore serve as

a baseline to assess the values on which existing environ-

mental policies have developed and to compare these to

current aspirations or visions such as those set out in the

SDGs or under the EU Biodiversity Strategy. Explicit recog-

nition of the multiple competing values underlying different

initiatives which aspire to sustainability, can serve as a ﬁrst-

step to analysing policy coherence, aligning multiple policy

objectives and institutional recognition of the range of diver-

gent norms in existing policies. As such normative policy

analysis can act as a useful starting point for institutional

transformation.

While the SDGs 14 and 15, and the Biodiversity Strat-

egy set the mission of achieving sustainability in terms of

reducing biodiversity loss, the legal mandate for sustain-

ability in EU member states is determined by environmen-

tal laws and directives. The pathways toward sustainabil-

ity are dependent on the current levels of sustainability

(the status quo) and the trajectories toward sustainabil-

ity are dependent on the legacy of historic and existing

practices. For practical purposes, the legal mandate of

sustainability science is enshrined in the legislation and

understanding how this legislation has developed is there-

fore critical to assessing the changes required to meet

the goals of the mission.

The aim of this paper is to identify the norms informing

environmental legislation in the European context with a

particular focus on their relevance to the biodiversity strat-

egy in marine and freshwater aquatic environments. Three

dominant themes in European environmental legislation are

identiﬁed. These norms are traced through the develop-

ment of environmental legislation, and the implications for

these norms in developing effective agency in environmen-

tal management is explored.

2. Analysis and Discussion

2.1. A Normative Classiﬁcation of Environmental Policy

Sustainable development is often represented as having

three distinct interrelated components: economy, environ-

ment and society. The model presented by Giddings et al.,

[

] of concentric circles with environment containing soci-

ety, and society containing economy, represents an ideal

frame, but in practice disciplinary silos generally result in

a range of more fragmented perspectives. Some authors

[

] have distinguished between the techno-economic,

socio-cultural and bio-ecological elements which go into

environmental decision making. This study takes the per-

spective that these three competing sets (economic, social

and ecological elements) relate to values or norms which

are transcribed into three types of environmental policy,

termed here Practical, Popular and Pure respectively and

that these can be distinguished by their focus on the man-

agement of different ecosystem services or on biodiversity.

Environmental policies with an anthropocentric focus

may be considered Practical. Practical norms are largely

aligned with natural resource management concepts, for

example, management of stocks to meet human ends,

through the exploitation or stewardship of the natural envi-

ronment. These may be loosely aligned with the concept

of economic well-being, where individuals seek to max-

imize their own profits or production. Practical policies

often relate to the systematic use of provisioning ecosys-

tem services. In this analysis policies are considered to

fall into this category if their primary focus is on natural

resource extraction and management.

Some components of conservation or sustainability

resonate more easily with the general public than oth-

ers. Popular norms are defined by their focus on cultural

ecosystem services. This impact of these policies may be

associated with non-use cultural ecosystem services for

example with species that are highly visible, the “warm

glow” [

] of protecting charismatic species, such as the

giant panda, the polar bear or cetaceans, which elicit

strong responses toward conservation. Similarly, sustain-

ability policies which have clear impacts on direct use

cultural services where, public goods are directly used by

individuals without the intermediary of a specific economic

sector (e.g. recreational fishing, swimming), may be con-

sidered popular as they relate to the public good rather

than economic development of any particular specific sec-

tor. The values or cultural ecosystem services associated

with these conservation norms may not necessarily be

aligned with scientific justification (e.g. Potts et al.) [

Regulations and policies, which implicitly focus principally

on cultural ecosystem services or components of ecosys-

tems, which supply these services, are categorised in this

analysis as Popular.

The Pure perspective is encapsulated by the slogan

adopted by the US environmental movement of the early

1970s “we have met the enemy and he is us”. This view-

point considers human activities as inimical to ecosystem

functions, juxtaposing man against nature. The norms as-

sociated with this narrative of purity seeks a return to pre-

anthropogenic disturbance. This concept of naturalness or

purity often represents the norm of the hard environmental

conservationists and, as in the CBD, recognises the “intrin-

sic worth” of the natural environment. Policies which aim

to minimize or eliminate human effects, principally for the

sake of the environment itself or for its ‘intrinsic value’, are

categorised as Pure in this analysis.

Individual pieces of European legislation may be Hy-

brids exhibiting a mixture of the three characteristics de-

scribed above. Table 1 summarises the main pieces of

EU environmental legislation directly related to the aquatic

environments. These pieces of legislation were mapped

against the norms described above based on their relation

to the use of ecosystem services. Policies were classiﬁed

as either Practical or Popular where they address manage-

ment of provisioning, or cultural services respectively. The

policies were categorised as Pure where they treat ecolog-

ical integrity as an end in itself, the texts of the legislation

were also analysed for explicit statements relating to eco-

nomic, social, and environmental values. Figure 1 maps

the legislation onto a Venn diagram of the three value sets.

The following section provides an historical narrative on the

development of the legislation over time, under headings of

the three norms.

Table 1.

Major Directives relating to the EU biodiversity

Strategy in the Aquatic environment.

Policy/Directive/Regulation Acronym Year

Common Agricultural Policy CAP 1962

Bathing Water Directive BWD 1976

Birds Directive BD 1979

Common Fisheries Policy CFP 1983

Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive UWWTD 1991

Nitrates Directive ND 1991

Habitats Directive HD 1992

Water Framework Directive WFD 2000

Marine Strategy Framework Directive MSFD 2008

Regulation on Alien Invasive Species IAS 2014

Figure 1.

Venn diagram showing the overlap in values

between different EU environmental directive and policies

relating to the biodiversity in aquatic environments.

2.2. Practical

Though not a policy explicitly directed at the management

of the aquatic environment, agricultural nutrient sources

play a major role in determining European water quality

[

] and for this reason the Common Agricultural Policy

cannot be omitted from any analysis of aquatic environ-

mental policy in Europe. The CAP, with the aims of achiev-

ing food security in Europe through modernization and

ensuring good prices for farmers, was put in place in 1962

and since its inception food security within Europe has

been maintained [

]. The CAP includes subsidies to farm-

ers as well as import tariffs to ensure prices for European

farmers. The early CAP was criticised as a protection-

ist policy having created price distortions in global food

markets [

] but recent revisions have removed some of

the more distorting subsidies [

]. The CAP has a bud-

get of

362.8 billion (almost 40% of the EU’s budget) to

subsidise agriculture in the period 2014–2020 [

]. In its

current form the policy is comprised of two ‘pillars’, direct

payments or subsidies which make up 70% of the CAP

budget and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Devel-

opment (EAFRD), which accounts for the remaining 30%

and provides co-funding for national programmes of rural

development [

]. In addition to continued food production,

the most recent reforms in the CAP aimed to encourage

farmers to provide public goods, enhance biodiversity and

play a role in climate mitigation. 30% of direct payments

are now nominally conditional on greening measures, in-

cluding maintenance of permanent grasslands and crop

diversification, in practice most farms, particularly smaller

ones, are exempted from having to take any action to re-

ceive these subsidies [

]. This proportion of the CAP

budget assigned to the production of food (a provisioning

service) clearly categorises the CAP as a Practical policy.

A Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) began to emerge in

the late 1970s as new member states joined the European

Economic Community, catalysing arrangements for existing

member states to gain free access to community ﬁshing

grounds. The CFP was formalised in 1983 [

] and has

subsequently undergone a number of reforms [

]. Fish-

eries under the policy aim to achieve Maximum Sustainable

Yield (MSY). This objective has been criticised both on an

economic basis (theoretically a more efﬁcient ﬁshery would

aim for Maximum Economic Yield) as well as on a technical

basis, achieving MSY in a mixed species ﬁshery is notori-

ously difﬁcult to achieve. The operation of the CFP itself

has also been heavily criticized on many fronts, in particular

for the systematic rejection of scientiﬁc advice on catch

levels [

]. In recent years for example catches have on

average been set 20% higher than the scientiﬁc advice [

as national political interests try to ensure the best deal for

their national ﬁshing industries. The setting of quotas has

also led to the practice of discarding, which is now banned

under the most recent reforms [

], which marking a shift

toward Ecosystem-based management. There has been

a long history of dysfunction in the CFP, currently 58% of

assessed commercial stocks are considered to be at levels

below levels of MSY [

] though some stocks are beginning

to recover [

]. The target of MSY clearly marks the CFP as

a Practical policy since the aim is to maximize the amounts

of ﬁsh extracted from the seas.

The European project was designed as a free trade

organisation to facilitate trade between European nations,

with the goals of averting war mainly through economic

means [

] and ensuring that the major policies controlling

sustainable development continue to have a chieﬂy eco-

nomic outlook. Figure 2 illustrates the budget breakdown

for sustainable growth and natural resources in the EU for

2015, the total budget is over

55.9 billion. Components of

the CAP combined with those of CFP make up over 99%

(97.5% and 1.68% respectively) of this budget, less than

1% is assigned to other aspects (including environment and

climate programs).

Figure 2. Sustainable growth: natural resources budget for the EU 2015 [52].

Conservation measures under “Greening of the CAP”

and reformed CFP have placed the expectation on farmers

and ﬁshers to be the major agents of biodiversity conserva-

tion. Following half a century of centrally facilitated intensiﬁ-

cation administered at the level of nation states, this marks

a major shift in expectation, which has not been backed up

by institutional support.

2.3. Popular

The ﬁrst pieces of EU law aimed at improving aquatic envi-

ronmental quality was the Bathing Water Directive. It was

introduced “in order to protect the environment and pub-

lic health” [

]. The directive sets limits on the levels of

bacteria (coliforms and enterococci) which are permitted to

occur at locations designated for public bathing, in fresh and

marine waters. Compliance with the directive has been sup-

ported by the European Commission since 1987 through

the Blue Flag program which promotes public awareness;

beaches which comply with water quality standards (and

certain other criteria) are awarded a blue ﬂag for clean-

liness. The implicit focus of the directive on (direct use)

cultural ecosystem services categorises the Bathing Water

Directive as Popular.

The Birds Directive was established in 1979 [

] and

updated in 2009 [

] to halt the decline in the numbers of

wild bird species in the EU, this trend is largely ascribed to

agricultural intensiﬁcation [

]. The directive lists various

species which must be conserved (Annex I) and others

which may be harvested subject to certain conditions (An-

nex II) and designates Specially Protected Areas (SPAs).

Both “natural balance” and “cultural heritage” are motiva-

tions for the Directive [

], the latter, illustrates the Popular

nature of the directive. Article 2 of the directive mandates

that bird species are maintained at “a level which corre-

sponds in particular to ecological, scientiﬁc and cultural

requirements, while taking account of economic and recre-

ational requirements, or to adapt the population of these

species to that level”. The perspective of the Birds Direc-

tive includes both ecological and cultural considerations

but its focus on “recreational and cultural requirements”, as

well as its scope covering on popularly appealing, charis-

matic species, which provide active and passive use cultural

ecosystem services, makes the case for its inclusion in the

popular set. Despite its early introduction, EU avian biodi-

versity continues to be eroded [57].

2.4. Pure

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) was introduced [

]

to harmonise the growing body of aquatic environmental leg-

islation. This directive regulates water quality in freshwaters

(rivers, lakes and groundwater) and saltwater (estuarine

and coastal) areas. The goal of the directive is to achieve

or maintain Good Ecological Status, which is deﬁned with

reference to a relatively clean or pristine reference condi-

tion, (determining reference conditions is itself a value laden

process). The directive takes a ‘deconstructing structural’

approach [

] dealing with the characteristics of speciﬁc

elements of water quality. These water quality elements

are measured by a suite of indicators which include chem-

ical parameters (concentrations of nutrients and oxygen)

as well as biological parameters such as the composition

of aquatic benthic ﬂora/fauna, fauna the abundance of spe-

ciﬁc sensitive insect species for freshwater and benthic

in-fauna in the marine. Given the long history of human

settlement and development in Europe, aquatic ecosys-

tems have been experiencing anthropogenic disturbance

for millennia [

], and to some the goal of good ecological

status is a ‘dream’ [

], particularly given the non-linear

responses of aquatic system to relaxation of anthropogenic

pressures [

]. The WFD permits the designation of heav-

ily modiﬁed water bodies, where speciﬁed uses of water

bodies (including navigation, hydro-power, and recreation)

would be signiﬁcantly affected by restoration measures and

no feasible cost-effective option exists that would maintain

these beneﬁts [

]. Nevertheless, since its introduction,

the directive has resulted in a major concerted effort in the

measurement and monitoring for the improvement of the

quality of water bodies around Europe [

]. The norms of

the directive are clearly Pure as they aspire to achieving

pre-anthropogenic conditions, with baseline targets set on

ecological rather than anthropocentric grounds.

2.5. Hybrids

The Nitrates Directive [

] deals directly with the prevention

of undesirable emissions from the “Practical” CAP for the

sake of achieving environmental quality, hence its inclusion

in the subset of Practical and Pure. Measures to ensure

compliance with the nitrates directive include the creation

of buffer strips in farm land to prevent agricultural run-off.

In practice the success of the Nitrates Directive is compli-

cated by the difﬁculties in enforcement of local actions over

the large spatial scales covered by the Directive [

]. The

nitrates directive is considered to have reduced nitrogen out-

puts from agriculture by between 3% and 19% depending

on the species of nitrogen considered [66].

The Urban Waste-Water Treatment Directives [

(UWWT) provides for end of pipe solutions to the release of

polluted waste waters. The maintenance of clean water has

elements of Practical natural resource management (supply

of a provisioning service for human health) and Popular

aspects in terms of supply of clean water for cultural service

such as bathing and is therefore classiﬁed as a hybrid of

practical and pure.

Following its commitments under the CBD, the Habitats

Directive came into force [

]. The directive is concerned

with the development of a network of Special Areas of Con-

servation (SAC) for speciﬁc habitat types and species in

which biodiversity is prioritised. The Natura 2000 network,

which is comprised of Habitats Directive SACs and Birds Di-

rective SPAs, is the largest network of reserves in the world,

and its development was seen as a major achievement of

the Biodiversity Action Plan. Sites are designated according

to the presence of particular target habitats or species listed

in the Annexes of the directive. Despite its size the Natura

2000 network has had mixed success; 60% of species and

77% of habitats covered by the directive are reported to be

in unfavourable condition [

]. The Natura 2000 network

has also fallen far short of its targets in assigning protected

status to agricultural areas. On a Europe wide basis only

11.5% of the agricultural area targeted to be designated

as SAC have been assigned [

]. Though the Habitats

Directive arose from the CBD, and was published in the

same year, it may be considered as a hybrid of Pure and

Popular in terms of its norms because it includes a mix of

obscure and popularly unrecognised species (e.g. Dytiscus

latissimus a diving aquatic beetle) which provides neither

cultural nor provisioning services, as well as charismatic

species (for example all species of whales are protected un-

der the directive) and the process of designation of species

for inclusion within the Annexes of the directive, through ex-

pert judgement included value based as well as ecologically

based decisions [70].

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) [

]

aims to achieve Good Environmental Status for each of

11 qualitative descriptors, uniting several environmental di-

rectives for the marine environment, these include WFD,

along with the Nitrates Directive and CAP, the habitats di-

rective and the CFP. The MSFD uses the language of the

ecosystem based approach and recognises the concepts

of ecosystem services and may be seen as a hybrid of all

three norms, with its descriptor on ﬁsheries being aligned

with the practical focus of the CFP, the eutrophication crite-

ria aligned with the Pure focus on the pristine environment

of the WFD while the incorporation of ecosystem services

(including cultural services) recognises the Popular nature

of public goods. In practice, during the ﬁrst round of appli-

cation, the approach of many member states has been to

collate the measures taken under existing directives and

attribute them as measures in the implementation of the

MSFD. Despite the high goals of the directive economic con-

straints have overridden the incorporation of new measures

to incorporate ecosystem services into implementation in

many cases e.g. [72].

One relatively new initiative under the EU Biodiversity

strategy, and stemming from European obligations under

the CBD has been the introduction of the recent regulation

on Invasive Alien Species (IAS) [

]. For the purposes

of the directive an alien species is “any live specimen of

a species. . . introduced outside of its natural range”. The

objective of the law is “to prevent, minimise and mitigate

the adverse impact on biodiversity of the introduction and

spread of invasive alien species”. This law obliges mem-

ber states to prevent the establishment and control the

spread of non-native species around Europe. The particu-

lar species to be addressed are contained within a list of

European concern. The current, ﬁrst list [

] differs from

the “list of 100 worst alien invasive species” [

] in that

it omits species, such as the Paciﬁc Oyster (Crassostrea

gigas), which are of economic importance but also consid-

ered invasive. While the language of the directive does

recognise ecosystem service concepts, the emphasis in

ecology on the concept of non-native species and the nar-

rative of invading aliens has been heavily criticised [

and the evolution of invasion science in the 1990s is closely

linked with the coining of the term biodiversity [

]. This reg-

ulation includes some exceptions for species of economic

importance in aquaculture under the Regulation concerning

use of alien and locally absent species in aquaculture [

which provides a loophole to prioritize aquaculture develop-

ment over environmental integrity. While the theory behind

invasive species research certainly falls into the normative

category of Pure, the list of species of union concern also

reﬂects the practical norm and the regulation may therefore

be seen as a hybrid of Practical and Pure.

3. Conclusions

The use of ecosystem services concepts in the policy anal-

ysis above marks a novel development in methodology for

developing explicit recognition of norms within policy. The

methodology has been used retrospectively to analyse ex-

isting policies. The analysis reveals a range of competing

norms and contradictory objectives in European environ-

mental policy that have emerged reactively over the course

of the formation and development of the EU.

The first EU Biodiversity Action Plan met with limited

success, its target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 was

not achieved [

], the EU Biodiversity Strategy aims to halt

this loss by 2020. The aim of this paper was to identify

underling norms in EU environmental policy which might

affect implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The

competing norms underlying EU environmental law have

shifted from the “Practical” through “Popular” toward “Pure”

and increasingly represent a range of norms, but the funda-

mental challenges to achieving sustainability in the frame

of European environmental law remain implicit trade-offs

between Practical provision of food and Pure protection of

nature.

Within Europe, the funding available for implementation

for practical policies eclipses funding for focussed environ-

mental legislation. The major relationship between humans

and the environment promoted by EU, the two main Practi-

cal policies (CAP an CFP) is one of consumption. Efforts

to reduce the amount of environmental damage of the ma-

jor Practical policies have been compromised by political

negotiation to ensure the economic livelihoods of small

farmers and of ﬁshers. As demonstrated by negotiations

in the CAP and CFP, politicians, on a ﬁve-year re-election

cycle lack the agency to impose costs on their constituents

for the purposes of poorly understood concepts such as

biodiversity and ecosystem services. For ﬁsheries and agri-

culture, despite recent reform, economic gains are more

immediately felt than environmental gains, and production

of private goods is more proﬁtable than production of public

ones. Under the current system food production is favoured

over biodiversity conservation, and conservation is gener-

ally economically irrational, that is, individuals do not stand

to increase their own economic welfare by protecting the

environment. Strategies for incorporating effective biodiver-

sity conservation into the Practical polices are therefore a

clear area for targeted further research.

The “intrinsic worth” of biodiversity, as articulated by

the CBD, is not necessarily self-evident, and there are not

clear links between all components of nature and well-being.

Though limited data exist at the European scale, at least for

the marine environment, public understanding and aware-

ness of environmental problems is poor [

]. This imbal-

ance could be redressed through education to develop pub-

lic understanding of the beneﬁts of nature, to better align

the Popular and Pure environmental norms.

The emerging focus on ecosystem services for exam-

ple in the MSFD may provide a mechanism to balance

these trade-offs. While full accounting for ecosystem ser-

vice values and internalisation within European policy can

in theory more fully elucidate and re-balance these trade-

offs, (as advocated by the MSFD) scientific understanding

of the role of biodiversity in the supply of ecosystem ser-

vices remains low [

]. Scientists therefore have a role

in elucidating these links through further research and ef-

fectively communicating their findings to a policy makers

and to the public.

In contrast to funding for rural development and ﬁsheries

exploitation, at the European level there is no dedicated

centralised organisation for the funding enforcement of en-

vironmental legislation. While the European Environment

Agency has a duty “to support sustainable development and

to help achieve signiﬁcant and measurable improvement in

Europes environment through the provision of timely, tar-

geted, relevant and reliable information to policy-making

agents and the public”. it has no mandate or means to

enforce regulation. This responsibility instead falls to na-

tional and local governments. Existing legislation might be

enforced more effectively through rebalancing the sustain-

able growth budget toward centralised ﬁnancial support for

environmental protection outside of the sectoral CAP and

CFP policies.

Even within environmental legislation loopholes exist,

the designation of heavily modiﬁed water bodies, the excep-

tions in the IAS regulation, the trade-off between economy

and environment have already been made at the legislative

and policy level.

4. Outlook

4.1. Agency and Irrational Trade-offs

At the individual level the goal of halting biodiversity loss,

along with achieving the other indivisible SDGs come down

to choices in consumption. In order to achieve these goals

European individuals may be required, to make personal

sacriﬁces for long term, greater good, to act against short-

term self-interest in the cause of equity. Reducing levels

of consumption may require individuals to make choices

from which they personally do not beneﬁt. This is a “wicked

problem” it requires moral judgements and result in winners

and losers. While science, can expose the resource con-

straints of a ﬁnite planet [

] it is not best suited to making

moral choices or subjective decisions as it has sometimes

attempted (e.g. [8,9,82]).

In this case agency requires an organisation which can

effectively encourage individuals to make personal sacri-

ﬁces, moral not rational choices. Markets discourage such

moral behaviours [

], and the precursors of modern sus-

tainability science has had a chequered past in this area of

morality. Traditionally religious institutions could encourage

or impose such choices about consumption and the major

European religious institutes are beginning to engage with

the environment as a moral issue [84].

This history of European environmental legislation pro-

vides evidence that European approaches toward sustain-

ability are evolving, and that some achievements have been

made, for example with the shift towards the concepts of

ecosystem based management under the MSFD, it also

suggests that major challenges to achieving the SDGs lie

ahead. Whether the European Union (with its origins as a

trading organisation) has the will, or the mandate to make

the changes to key Practical policies or to force the difﬁ-

cult trade-offs between consumption and biodiversity that

are required to meet the mission of the SDGs and of the

Biodiversity Strategy remains to be seen.

The identiﬁcation of competing norms and contradictory

principals in this analysis provides a starting point from

which European institutions can build policy coherency. The

method may facilitate the proactive adaptation of existing

policies and the design of new types of policy that more

fully recognise and integrate the multiple Practical, Popular

and Pure objectives and norms which are reﬂected in the

SDGs and which are required to meet the goals of halting

biodiversity loss in Europe.

In order to develop a truly integrated and effective ap-

proach to meeting the targets of the EU Biodiversity Strat-

egy the norms relating to the provisioning and cultural

ecosystem services of the Practical and Popular sets should

be aligned with the policies of the Pure set. We need to

make Pure more Popular, by improving public understand-

ing of the environment (and thereby increasing cultural

ecosystem services) and Practical more Pure by ﬁnding

techniques of resource extraction that are less destructive.

Explicit consideration of these differing norms provides a

basis for further analysis. Ecosystem services concepts

offer one potential avenue for moving past trade-offs be-

tween economic gain versus “intrinsic” worth, yet difﬁcult

trade-offs may still remain. European policy makers, sci-

entists, educators and religious institutions all have roles

to play and Europe may need to re-engage with concepts

of morality rather than economy or ecology to achieve its

conservation goals.

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